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Pride of the Aegean

Sail Date:
June 2014

Destination:
Greece

Embarkation:
Athens (Piraeus)

We chose this cruise line for two reasons: small ship and locations that we wanted to go to. The cruise starts in Athens and visits Greek Islands, and Turkish ports, ending at Istanbul. We got to all the ports that were planned and that part of the cruise worked well. The ship was small and that part worked well also. The problem is that the cruise line promotes itself as luxury, great service, and special moments with great pictures and advertisements of features that in reality did not often come to pass. Additionally, the transfer agents that they use in Athens and Istanbul do not fit well with when it comes to great service. Both places, problems developed and were not resolved very well. We also had some problems with the Seattle office of Windstar before the trip began and our travel agent did as well. Once on board, service at times was great, other times, not so great. The excursions in the ports were generally very good, but for some reason, lunch on a full day excursion was More
almost always very late, sometimes well after 2pm when we had started the day at 7am with breakfast for an early departure. Another issue was the well advertised water sports platform. They picture a small sailboat but that was broken, and that seemed to typify a lot of the issues with the whole ship. Many things had not been fixed that should have been before sailing, even water leaks. I had a list that I left for the hotel manager, but he never responded to me. Likewise the excursion manager said he would get back to us but we had to go to him after his own deadline passed. At one point I asked for a copy of a piece paper be made and that was not possible. These were just typical problems that occurred through out the trip. The staff, not officers, really tried to do a good job, but cannot say the same for the management, starting in Seattle. The nightly reviews of the upcoming ports was great. The food went from great to subpar. For us, we took an Alaskan cruise with Holland America the year before and thought they did a better job( Statendam, 1200 people). Would have gone with them again, but they did not have a ship, smaller than two thousand, that went to the ports that we wanted. This ship and cruise line has great potential as the rooms themselves were great, but lots of work is needed, both physically and managerially. Less